


Jurassic Ark

by SniperAnon (The_Big_Reveal)



Series: Jurassic Ark [1]
Category: ARK: Survival Evolved, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: 99 gets laid, Alpha is a DILF, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Animal Death, Blood and Gore, Blow Jobs, Bottom Obi-Wan Kenobi, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Dinosaurs, Eventual Smut, Fluff, Free Use Kink, Grief/Mourning, I am not a paleontologist, I wrote this to be gay not accurate, Jedi Culture Respected, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Mystery, Obi-Wan Kenobi Gets a Hug, Obi-Wan dates the entire GAR including 99 and Alpha-17, Obi-Wan's clone harem, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Palpatine and the sith aren't a concern, Porn With Plot, The relationship tags are a mess so I shall translate, Wilderness Survival, clones befriending and riding dinosaurs whats not to love, clones/clones - Freeform, death of characters that aren't quite major or minor, do not copy to another site I'm dead serious fam, gangbangs, gardening and animal husbandry, happy boyish clones, harsh realities, or a wilderness survival expert, pet death, playing fast and loose with both, then they befriend and ride Obi-Wan too, well rounded and nuanced Alpha-17
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:26:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25164634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Big_Reveal/pseuds/SniperAnon
Summary: He wakes up to his life lying face down in fine, waterlogged sand knowing too much yet nothing at all.The diamond-shaped implant lodged his wrist, an aching, foreign body surrounded by raw tissue, labels him CT-7567. He knows this number represents him. He does not know how he knows this.OR: The sexy dinosaur-riding wilderness survival fic you didn't know you needed.Star Wars / Ark: Survival Evolved fusion. No knowledge of Ark required.
Relationships: 212th Attack Battalion/Obi-Wan Kenobi, 501st Legion/Obi-Wan Kenobi, 99/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Alpha-17/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Boil/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Boil/Waxer (Star Wars), CC-1010 | Fox/Obi-Wan Kenobi, CC-2224 | Cody/CT-7567 | Rex, CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi, CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi/CT-7567 | Rex, CT-21-0408 | Echo/CT-27-5555 | Fives | ARC-5555, CT-21-0408 | Echo/Obi-Wan Kenobi, CT-27-5555 | Fives | ARC-5555/Obi-Wan Kenobi, CT-5597 | Jesse/CT-6116 | Kix, Dogma/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Alpha-17, Obi-Wan Kenobi/CC-3636 | Wolffe, Obi-Wan Kenobi/CT-56-6163 | Dogma, Obi-Wan Kenobi/CT-7567 | Rex, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Clone Trooper Character(s), Obi-Wan Kenobi/Coruscant Guard, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Happiness - Relationship, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Waxer, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Wolfpack
Series: Jurassic Ark [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823002
Comments: 51
Kudos: 233





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alright folks. Crash course/need to knows for this au:
> 
> 1\. This is a Star Wars dominant fusion. Which means that the Ark is located somewhere (👀) in that galaxy far far away. All of the Star Wars material/history/mechanics are relevant for this au… they just aren't readily apparent to the boys! The Ark is isolated from the galaxy at large but still a part of it.
> 
> 2\. Due to the material of the Ark games we are working with, this au will include Earth/Terran dinosaurs/creatures… BUT there isn't actually an Earth. The planet Earth is not a thing. We are hand waving the SHIT out of this disparity, kk? I do not want to suffer through rebranding every goddamn creature on the Ark to be Star Wars flavored nor do I have the energy to come up with original beasties. Hopefully this doesn't break immersion! 
> 
> 3\. I am also not going to be describing any real dinosaurs in much detail. Who knows wtf they actually looked like! 
> 
> 4\. Obi-Wan will not be showing up for a while! So a lot of the ships and kinks listed will not be relevant for a while. I tagged it in advance anyway to avoid being disingenuous. Also keep in mind this fic WILL be slow to update. I have a lot of projects on my plate. 
> 
> 5\. ~~They live in a very dangerous world but I can't bear to kill off any characters. They're all gonna make it So Help Me God. But there are a lot of past deaths so watch out, ok?~~
> 
> 6\. ~~If #5 changes I WILL LET YOU ALL KNOW.~~ #5 IS NO LONGER TRUE! There will be pet/animal deaths and ONE character death. This character died in TCW canon and is not exactly a major character. Please PM me if you want info on which character dies/which animals die!
> 
> The main reason I even felt the urge to make this au was due to my first impression of the game! I thought that player characters were implied to be clones! Which, of course, my goblin brain immediately related to the Fett clones. Then I found out about the jet packs and alien plot and got real excited.
> 
> EDIT: For those of you who have no idea WTF ARK is and want a general idea of what the series is like, I honestly recommend checking out the game trailers on YouTube. Particularly the Announcement Trailer, Abberation trailer, and Scorched Earth trailer!

**Chapter 1**

**Our Paludarium**

  
  


He wakes up to his life lying face down in fine, waterlogged sand knowing too much yet nothing at all. 

The diamond-shaped implant lodged in his wrist, an aching, foreign body surrounded by raw tissue, labels him CT-7567. He knows this number represents him. He does not know how he knows this. 

CT-7567's arm lay beside him on the speckled beach, submerged barely a centimeter deep in chill crystalline water. His hand is relaxed, fingers curled passively, palm loose. He hasn't consciously flexed those muscles ever before. The only thing he  _ has _ done is open his eyes and use them to blink at the dark blue implant. At the inscription with his… Designation… on its face. 

_ It itches.  _

_ Don't scratch it, _ his brain says,  _ there isn't any skin around it to protect you from your own fingernails.  _

His fingers twitch then curl around a fresh deluge of bubbly surf. The movement hurts tender and deep around the embedded foreign body. The saltwater burns. He's high up enough on the beach that he only needs to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment and spit when the wave recedes with a hissing gurgle. 

His body temperature is low from the chill of the salty water but the skin on the back side of his body is warm, verging on hot. 

_ Get up, _ his brain says,  _ you'll get a sunburn if you stay here much longer. The water is only making it worse.  _

He doesn't know what a sunburn feels like but he understands burns aren't worth experiencing. CT-7567 turns his hands, digs fingers deep into the soft, moggy sand. Claws, heaves himself on trembly limbs. He grunts as he scrapes to his knees. The sand sucks on his legs as he dislodges himself from shallow burial. 

He folds back onto his bare bottom with a splash but manages to stay propped upright on his arms. CT-7567’s entire body shakes with exhaustion. Another small wave surges around him before slipping away. 

A plough snail trundles by. He watches it inch slow but sure along the wet sand and the curls of disturbed grains left in its wake. CT-7567 isn't sure why he knows it's called a plough snail. But he does. 

He exhales long and slow, tilts his head back. His lungs feel short and cold with fatigue. Above him is a stone ceiling supported by wave-buffeted pillars of rock with an eerie, perfectly round hole which sunlight drapes through. 

_ I'll rest here a moment, _ he decides,  _ strength will come to me.  _

  
  
  


*******

He isn’t alone long. Twenty, twenty-five minutes tops. 

The first thing he hears is the clattering of disturbed rocks and crunch of gravel which might have alarmed him if he didn't hear the indistinct murmur of conversation too. CT-7567 continues chewing his scavenged snack while shrewdly watching for the source. 

The voices turn out to be two men, both dark skinned and darker haired. One is older, heavy muscled, wind whipped with  _ scars.  _ So many scars that CT-7567 can't count how many stripe and knot what little skin he is baring around the leathers they both wear. 

CT-7567 notices immediately that the second man is identical to the first. They have the exact same facial features, same hair, same height. The second is younger, though, leaner with largely unmarked warm brown skin. He has a huge bandage taped to his temple/brow, however, a scar in the making. 

Both are inscrutable in different ways. The younger man has a preoccupied moue to his expression, the edge of a scowl. The elder man is deceptively apathetic, flinty eyes half lidded in his otherwise neutral face. 

It takes them a beat to notice him crouched as he is behind a boulder. The bird at his side squawks at the two newcomers. 

_ “Blond,”  _ the older one remarks when he spots CT-7567. 

Experiencing the funny miracle of spoken language for the first time renders him mute.

The younger bursts out laughing (!!) when he side-steps closer and sees the scavenged fishing line CT-7567 has around the dodo he caught. Not that catching it was a mighty feat; the bird let him walk right up and pass the noose over its head without protest. It only honks with hapless dismay whenever the line stops it from meandering. 

The older man eyes the bullwhip kelp that CT-7567 is snacking on. CT-7567 raises an eyebrow challengingly.

The man smiles. 

"You'll do."

"Welcome to the Ark, little brother."

  
  


*******

  
  


"Leave it," the older man grunts, turning without further comment back the way they came. 

CT-7567 had nowhere else to go but with them, of course, and their easy acceptance of CT-7567 was honestly a relief. But that didn't mean he appreciated being ordered around. 

The younger man cut in with a conciliatory voice before CT-7567 could do anything but make a face, "Don't mind Alpha, he's just an asshole. What he should say is: 'we already have plenty of dodos back home.'" 

CT-7567 chokes on his own spit at the unconventional, unexpected use of the word asshole and the visual his encyclopedic brain offers for what an asshole  _ is.  _

Once he recovers from that he manages to reply, "What if I like this one?" 

Shaping the words is as novel and strange as everything else. His mouth feels clumsy, almost gummy as he speaks and his words sound soft-edged and slurred. 

The young man quirks a brief smile, points at the bird, "That's Lenny. He lives over here and usually he's the one to greet shinies. You're the first one to catch him right after being decanted, though." 

CT-7567 considers that for a moment before sighing and bending to widen the mouth of the fishing-line noose and ease it back over the creature's head. The move nearly dumps him to the ground, unable to balance well with his limbs as stiff and weak as they are, but the other man steadies him with a hand on his back. The calloused touch on his bare skin is an electric shock and CT-7567 struggles to not tip straight onto his face. 

"Thanks," CT-7567 huffed, grimacing as he forces his knotted body to straighten. Lenny the dodo toddles away with no apparent urgency. 

"No problem." 

"So… What do you mean by 'shiny?'" 

The bandaged man smirks, "You. All naked, shiny, and new. Helpless like Lenny." 

CT-7567 scoffs, "I may be naked but I'm not helpless."

"You'll feel differently when we start walking home."

  
  


*******

  
  


"You're wearing shoes. Why didn't you guys bring me shoes?" CT-7567 wheezed, limping and hopping on tender feet. 

"We forgot," his companion cheerfully replies. He lets CT-7567 hang from his shoulders, takes as much of CT-7567's weight as he can. This is the only reason he doesn't get punched right in the ear by CT-7567. He's also the perfect height to serve as a crutch, which endears him even more to CT-7567. 

"I hate you," CT-7567 puffs even still. 

“Here, I'm just gonna give you my shoes. I don't think you'll make it to the supply box." 

… Fair enough. They haven't even crested the gentle, shallow slope and CT-7567 is already struggling. He longs hatefully for the soft beach sand. 

Cody lowers him carefully and he breathes "Oh, thank you," and collapses gratefully onto a lichen-speckled boulder. The coarse surface bites into his bare ass. His companion kneels beside him to unlace the leather ties of his boots. 

"I'm CC-2224 AKA Cody, by the way _.  _ Used to be Glory* but Shout couldn’t pronounce my name worth shit, so… Cody it is.”

"Shout?" mumbles CT-7567, struggling to keep up. 

Cody frowned, "Another brother like us. He's dead."

CT-7567 stares at nothing for a long moment. 

"... I'm sorry."

"It's okay." 

  
  


*******

  
  


They manage to drag him up the hill and out of the enclosure CT-7567 was… Decanted at. They're still surrounded by rock and scaff taller than them, though, and there isn't much to see but their path. Cody is holding his hand, allowing CT-7567 to heave against the support he offers without comment. Cody walks barefoot without batting an eye, too, which CT-7567 fiercely envies. Even wearing the wooly socks and boots he feels like his feet are slipping around painfully inside his own skin. It's a horrible, persistent burning sting that he can't fully ignore. 

"What does decanting actually mean?" CT-7567 asks between heavy breaths, desperate for a distraction, "I know what it means, but I don't… know what it  _ means."  _

"Who knows. Best we can figure out from flash training is that decanting is essentially getting birthed. But instead of actually being born we wake up on that shore fully grown." 

"How did I get there?" 

"We've never seen it happen. Based on observation the Ark won't decant if someone is there to observe it. So, as far as we know? Brothers just… show up there. Alpha and I make a habit of visiting when we think someone might get decanted. You actually showed up early."

"And flash training is… this knowledge download in my head. Right?" 

"Right." 

"No idea where that download came from or how it was done?" 

"Correct. We just have a fuckload of survival techniques and knowledge of the flora and fauna packed into our skulls for some reason." 

_ Fuckload? _ "Right…" CT-7567 sighs, "How did you guys know to look for me?" 

Cody lapses into silence, eyes on the trail ahead of them. Allowing him the silence is easy for CT-7567, preoccupied as he is with stepping over an inconveniently positioned hunk of driftwood. CT-7567 gasps for breath, pauses to lick his lips and swallow before lifting a trembling leg. He sways his body into the steadying pillar of Cody’s body to counter-balance his weight. Cody’s hand barely dips from the added pressure and his far heavier musculature bunches with tireless strength. His hand is warm. 

"They're dead," Cody finally says once CT-7567 stumbles over the obstacle and regains his footing, "All of the others. Alpha and I were the only ones who made it." 

The grief in his voice is so stark that CT-7567 has to close his eyes against the renewed prickpressure behind his eyes. He's never cried before though he intellectually knows what crying is. He wipes at the moisture in his eye with a bubbling mixture of wonder, heartache, and overwhelm. His hand shakes so badly that he wipes the tears in a mess over his cheekbone more than anything. Cody squeezes a comforting pressure around his hand before letting go. 

"Sorry," CT-7567 coughs, closing his eyes to let Cody’s calloused thumb press gently to the well of his eye and stroke tenderly over his wet eyelashes, first one then the other. 

"Shh, it's alright," Cody murmured, "everything is strange and new. You're  _ raw. _ It's normal."

"Damn right I'm raw," he rasps, kicking a sweaty booted foot.  _ Raw in every way. _ Cody laughs and takes up his hand again. CT-7567's face is flushed hot but he stubbornly focuses on the placement of his treacherous feet. 

They continue their painfully slow trek in silence. CT-7567 wobbles. Then Cody draws another breath. 

"We always get more brothers when people die. A far as we can tell the Ark keeps everything at a steady population, including us. If any particular species dips too far you can expect replacements in a month or so."

CT-7567 looks over his shoulder in alarm. Cody squeezes his hand and laughs. 

"Nah, we're the only ones that decant here. This is probably one of the safest spots in the Ark." 

CT-7567 puffs, relieved. 

"Boogey died about… About two months before everyone else. So It'll be just you, me, and Alpha for a while until the next batch rolls in."

"Super."

"Alpha is a good guy, don't worry. He's just… brutally practical. He'll grow on you like mold."

  
  


*******

  
  


They emerge into a huge beachside vista. The mountain-framed sky is so blue that he can only stare wide eyed and open mouthed for a long time. 

Cody patiently allows him to stand and ostensibly catch his breath. Lets him clench their sweaty hands tight. 

Palm trees bob and whisper in the warm wind and the drifts of flower-speckled, coarse looking grass ripples. On the trail ahead of them is Alpha walking towards them with a tan parasaur in tow. In the distance he sees a brontosaurus grazing from trees, so far down the broad tributary to their left that its gargantuan size is the only thing that allows him to perceive it. The black shadow of pterodactyl skulks high in the sky, probably patrolling along the river for food. Insects and small birds creak and sing and creatures bicker too far in the distance to be a concern. It's hot outside of the cool shelter of stone. 

To their extreme right couched deep in distant trees, but much closer to them than the mountains, an impossible obelisk looms. 

The obelisk is a massive tower of bluish metal that gleams painfully sharp in the sunlight. Glowing, pulsing green light wreathes the exposed inner belly of the thing. Green radiation leaks into the open air in curling plumes so massive that CT-7567 can see them clearly despite being miles and miles away. From the pointed crest at the top that green light shoots up into a steady sky-piercing beacon. On the front of the obelisk is a blank-faced diamond identical to the one lodged in his wrist. He knows in all likelihood the implant is made of the same blue metal as the structure. 

Alpha and the approaching parasaur provide easy points of reference to contrast the size of the monolith. The difference is horrifying. It looms so massive, veers so impossibly tall and straight to the point of nearly creating the optical illusion of a curve, that it seems somehow obscene. Just looking up at its girth makes him queasy and sick. 

CT-7567 has no idea what the obelisk is. Only the word 'obelisk' comes to mind, a simple description of its shape. It is the first thing he's laid eyes on that his brain has nothing to offer him, no explanation to whisper. Just like the concept of the Ark itself, he knows nothing beyond its designation. The idea of standing in its shadow is… 

"No," CT-7567 croaks, "absolutely not."

"Yep."

"I hate it." 

"Mhm." 

"What  _ is  _ it?" 

Cody’s voice warps when it passes through his upset snarl, "Absolute dungshit. That's where all our brothers died."

CT-7567 is forced to avert his eyes from the monstrosity. He can feel Cody watching him with such kindness and empathy that he can feel his gentle regret as if it were his own. 

Cody soothingly adds, "After a while it becomes… pretty whatever. Ignorable background. But I remember how horrible it is to look at the first time."

"It's so big," CT-7567 mutters thickly. 

"I know. It seems wrong somehow."

He nods, "Like it shouldn't be there."

The knowledge imprinted into CT-7567's brain was an unsettling, violating, queasy-making reality to contend with on its own. He didn't expect to be so unsettled by its lack. Yet he was. 

  
  


*******

CT-7567 is propped on a convenient driftwood log and Cody is digging through a cleverly hidden crate behind him by the time Alpha regroups with them. 

It also turns out that he wasn't mistaken and the parasaur  _ was  _ following the man. Alpha has a hand on reins made of dark, thick leather strung to a metal bit in the parasaur's bill. A saddle cushioned by a colorful blanket is strapped to its tall back. 

Alpha led the beast around to a stop in front of him and his log with that same unchanging mild expression. For its part, the parasaur lowers its crested head to the ground and lifts its thick tail to counterbalance as it browses for grass. 

"Help me boost him, Cody."

"Wait a second," Cody calls back, "His feet are pretty shot. I wanna wrap them before we load him up. 

Alpha scowls, "Why'd you let him fuck up his feet, Glory?" 

Cody trots back into view carrying a loop of worn grey cloth, a second pair of leather boots, a broad straw hat, and other miscellany CT-7567 can't quite see. The parasaur startles CT-7567 when its heavy back foot thumps with it's considerable weight. It's simply pivoting, though, to snack on some vegetation. A good snack, too, judging by the beast's deep rhythmic chuff of satisfaction on a register so low that CT-7567 could feel it in his sternum. He is utterly distracted watching it. 

"He'll just have blisters. I did my best to keep him from ripping them up short of carrying him, which you said yourself I'm not allowed to do until my head heals." Alpha makes a displeased noise. Cody shrugs, "Blondie's gonna need to toughen his hide up sooner or later. Might as well start now."

"My name is not Blondie," CT-7567 says firmly, leaning over with aching abdominals to start pulling at the laces of his boots.

"Sure, little brother," Cody agrees distractedly, dropping the straw hat onto CT-7567's head. The hot glare of midday is punishing and he's instantly grateful for the shade the hat gives him. 

Both men drop in front of him, Cody sitting and Alpha crouching, to help de-shoe and de-sock him. CT-7567 hisses, can't help the quiet groans of discomfort that slip out. The two men are gentle but no-nonsense as they wind the cloth around his tender appendages. 

It's exceedingly strange for him to sit and allow himself to be attended to while he sits idle. 

It's also strange being handled by a man like Alpha. They've barely exchanged words and he doesn't know what to make of a man who radiates confident lethality with such potency. To say he's intimidated would be an understatement. The urge to avert his eyes and play quiet is easy to indulge. 

CT-7567's feet are hot, reddened, and swollen with a strange white cast to the skin. Wrapping them snugly in the grey cloth does seem to help the stinging and his feet feel a little more secure in the boots. Cody wrestled the extra pair of boots and socks onto his own feet, too, before the two men stand and brush themselves off. Cody interrupts the parasaur's snack to maneuver it with reins and a hand on its broad side, angling it right up beside the log CT-7567 is slumped on. The creature follows his directions easily and waits placidly. 

"Alright little brother, up you go."

Startled, he snaps out of the tired trance he'd been in, "Wait- am I not getting any clothes?" 

Alpha shakes his head, "No. We would have to undress you soon anyway. The hat will do for now. Hold on to me and grab the saddlehorn when you can."

Alpha lifts him entirely off the ground and heaves his entire body with astounding strength, almost single handedly hoisting him onto the tall back of the beast. CT-7567 scrambles to grab hold of saddle bags then saddlehorn with his wobbly limbs, sticking a leg out and up over the hump of the saddle. Cody grabs his ankle and pulls. Together the three of them tip him onto the baking heat of the smooth leather seat. 

CT-7567 struggles to balance himself, unaccustomed to the organic sway of the parasaur adjusting to his intrusion. Nothing like sitting on a log. 

"Sling your other leg over and sit sideways," Alpha commands, "you're not gonna want to ride the whole way naked and balanced on your balls."

"Yeah, I noticed," CT-7567 grunts, breathing hard, struggling to lift his other leg, "Why is everything so… So  _ difficult?" _

Alpha pushes his leg to ease the strain and once again Cody pulls-- CT-7567 yelps. 

"Seriously," Alpha growls impatiently, "Get your fuckin' coconuts out of the way."

"Right, sorry. Ugh." 

CT-7567 gingerly cups himself, adjusting his leg to more comfortably sit side-saddle. Alpha, the bastard, laughs at him. He shoots a sour look down at the man only to blink curiously when that weathered face sobers. 

He's glad to be sitting so high on the parasaur and away from the man when Alpha leans in, face serious, eyes drilling straight into his. 

"You gonna be ok to balance like this? Honest assessment or I cuff you." 

CT-7567 thinks about it for a moment instead of giving the knee jerk response that hops to his lips. He experimentally sways in the seat. Eventually offers a cautious, "Yes, I think so." 

"Good. If you think you are going to fall, faint, or generally screw up you will warn us. If you must fall, fall towards me so I can catch you."

"Y-yes. I can do that."

Cody flings a rough blanket up onto CT-7567's lap, "He'll be fine, Duckberry is good with shinies. Here, wrap this around your shoulders. You're probably not gonna get a sunburn but it doesn't hurt to be safe." 

CT-7567 does so obediently. Alpha clucks his tongue, "Let's go."

  
  
  


*******

  
  


The ride goes well enough. Lady Duckberry the parasaur is endlessly patient with him and the terrain they cross is gentle. They arrive 'home' in good time. 

Home is a cluster of buildings set a short distance away from the decanting beach and to the right towards the obelisk. CT-7567 dislikes that but, thankfully, the obelisk itself is still many miles away. He also understands why they settled where they did; they were close enough to pick up new… brothers… without a fuss but far enough away to not interfere with the decanting process. 

The buildings were a mishmash of thatch, wood, and stone overlooking a small river that split into a webwork of gentle freshwater streams. The network of islands between those streams were connected by felled palm trees that served as simple but effective bridges. Gill nets hang from several of those makeshift bridges. 

The buildings themselves… Unnerve him. 

The biggest, most obviously maintained structures were set high enough above the tributaries to avoid any flooding and make use of open ground for animal pens and gardens. But there were other spots further into the trees--camp sites, lean-tos, old fire pits, and temporary structures of varying complexity--that were decrepit with age. All abandoned skeletons of past attempts to make a home. Some were so old and worn away that CT-7567 only spotted them because he was actively looking for them. 

_ "They're dead. All of the others. Alpha and I were the only ones who made it."  _

_ "…It'll be just you, me, and Alpha for a while until the next batch rolls in." _

CT-7567 stares at the remnants of lives lived so long ago, all spent like so much wasted blood. 

The two men unload him on a log next to the closest stream and Alpha leaves Cody to douse him with buckets of water to sluice the salt from his skin. Cody surely notices how troubled he is but remains silent, simply dries him when he's too slack and disillusioned to be much help. 

Then Cody carries him without comment despite his head wound and the potential for Alpha's wrath. CT-7567 is brought to a structure so cleverly disguised under forest detritus he doesn’t even notice it until Cody sets him down and opens the hidden door. The only hint that human hands ever touched the area were the wooden stakes positioned on top of the hidden burrow in bristling spikes… Probably to discourage large beasts from stepping on it and crushing everyone inside. 

"This is where we sleep," Cody murmurs softly, "and also where you should hide if there are predators around. We've got it pretty well disguised from scent but not sound, so try to be quiet."

CT-7567 thought about that for a moment before deciding, "Hate that."

Cody smiled without much humor, "When we get more boys that won't be as much of a problem--most animals will leave us alone. Until then we'll just have to be careful. Come on. In you go." 

"Okay," CT-7567 said faintly, crawling in on hands and knees. 

The inside of the sleeping den was surprisingly clean and roomy, probably from newness. It was half buried under a convenient hill, likely supported by a wood-beam skeleton packed over and smoothed with baked clay to keep the dirt out and the heat in. The domed ceiling had a fire-seared hole in the center but no fire pit in evidence. Instead, the thatch floor was covered in a deep layer of plush furs that caressed CT-7567's skin so decadently that he couldn't help but groan. Cody chuckled at him. 

"Take a nap, you'll need it. Alpha and I are gonna finish some chores then I'll come back and wake you for dinner, ok?"

CT-7567 wants to offer his help but he's so exhausted that he'd be worse than useless. So he only nods and drags himself to lay in the center right next to the little peek of sunlight. The burrow smells pleasantly like musk and woodsmoke. 

He's asleep only moments after closing his grainy eyes. 


	2. Life and the Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Alpha we trust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, fam! It’s been a while, but here I am with an update to this cracky little fic!
> 
> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!IMPORTANT UPDATES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> For one, I have already decided to break rule #5 'No characters shall die' from the list I posted in chapter 1. This is NO LONGER TRUE and includes animal and pet death! As anyone who has played Ark knows, the Ark is goddamned dangerous and characters as well as beloved tames die constantly. I'll be playing all of this straight. Some animal deaths start in this chapter as well. There is also frank discussion of killing animals for sustenance. So look out! 
> 
> There is only one clone that I will be killing off and he died in TCW canon. The character in question isn't... quite...? A MAJOR character, so I have chosen to not include the archive warning 'Major Character Death.' Let me know if you feel this isn't appropriate. Even still, in the interest of not traumatizing y'all TOO much, I am more than happy to disclose the list of planned character and pet deaths that I have so far. 
> 
> This chapter is brought to you by the song Glass Animals - Life Itself.

**Chapter 2**

**Life and the Ghosts**

  
  


On CT-7567's third day of life, he woke alone in the family den. 

This wasn't unusual. The past few days Alpha and Cody were long gone well before the sun breached the Ark's horizon, while CT-7567 only stirrs well into the morning. He would soon be expected to wake early with them, though, and Cody assured him he'd hate it. But he had a few days where his primary duties were _resting_ and _healing._

It was good advice borne from experience. Day by day CT-7567's head cleared of the sickening, fuzzy static which had incapacitated him so. 'Decanting sickness,' Alpha called it. CT-7567’s speech got clearer, his movements smoother, and his thoughts smarter. His feet felt wretched on his second day, worse than the day he'd injured them, but now they felt better than they had since he woke up with them. 

He twisted on the furs with a tired grumble, intending to bend his knee and check the swelling underneath the salve-laden wraps around his feet, when he spotted a dinosaur staring right at him and instinctively froze. 

It was a dilophosaurus. The creature had probably nosed around the camouflaged door and wedged its head through the secondary curtain of dried reeds. Orange and yellow eyes were fixed on him. The frill around its face was not flared yet, which CT-7567's flash training told him meant he had a few more seconds before he died. 

They stare at each other in mutual, tense silence. CT-7567 was petrified. The dilophosaurus was still aside from a blink with both sets of eyelids. 

The loose, colorful skin around its neck starts to unfurl. Slowly. 

CT-7567 lunges toward it with a shout. 

Bright eyes widened and the beast rears back, startled, just before CT-7567's fist connects with its nose. 

At first, CT-7567 registers the crunch and thinks, 'Oh, my knuckle.' But the dilophosaurus yips and jumps back, maybe he hurt it? Or maybe he hadn't, because those orange and yellow eyes go wide as it thrashes, trying to turn its head to look _behind_ it, smacking its face against the wall of the burrow, and CT-7567 hears it scrabbling at the ground outside. 

With a rasp of claws the dilophosaurus slides backwards out of the den and CT-7567 can't see it anymore beyond the curtain of grass. 

There was another yelp, a hiss. A wet, meaty thud. Then silence. 

CT-7567 lays panting on the furs, adrenaline howling through his veins. The silence outside stretches long before footsteps crunch on the dirt toward the den. 

A hand parts the curtain and Alpha's scarred face peers through the gap. His eyebrows raise at CT-7567's teeth baring snarl. 

Just Alpha. He exhales explosively in relief, a hand moving to clutch over his galloping heart. The older man shoves the curtain aside and backs into the den feet-first with a stony expression, absently wiping the blood off the blade of the axe in his hands. CT-7567 crawls to meet him. 

"It get you, little brother?" Alpha asks, voice low. 

CT-7567 shakes his head, struggling to slow the frantic pound of his heart, "No. Maybe. I got it in the nose, but I might have hurt myself more than I hurt it." 

Alpha's eyebrows raise again. "Yeah? Good job, though it would have been smarter to use your cudgel. Let me see your hand."

"Sorry. Forgot about it in the moment…" CT-7567 obediently offers his hands. Alpha's fingers are hard from callous and scar tissue. 

"Keep your thumb out of your fist when you throw a punch," Alpha scolds harshly after only a moment's examination, "Otherwise the impact can fuck up your thumb. No thumbs means you die here. Only thing worse than losing your thumbs or toes is messing up your teeth. So keep your thumbs out of the way." 

CT-7567 knows by now to answer with a "Yes, Alpha."

"Alright, get outside. I'm going to show you how to throw a proper punch."

*******

CT-7567 gets shown how to throw a proper punch. Most of all, he gets shown how to fall. There's an art to falling, apparently, which CT-7567 wasn't expecting but makes sense. Alpha teaches him how to fall gracefully by knocking him to the ground. Over and over. He practically uses him like a broom to clear the common grounds around their firepit. 

He lands on the dirt, barking at the impact. His forearms and palms sting from the abrasive scrape of the millions of tiny stones, harsh grains of dirt, and little twigs that so easily cut through his still-fine skin. The raw skin around his implant was, thankfully, covered by a bandage though it stung from sweat. But he manages to roll with the momentum like Alpha taught him. 

"You're inevitably going to fall ass over teakettle-" Alpha states, looming over him, blocking the sun as he rolls his sleeves out of the way. His bare arms roil with thick bands of muscle. 

CT-7567 spits out dirt. 

"-so have enough self respect to control the damage. That attempt wss hardly any better."

"It's his third day on the Ark," Cody calls, "Should you beat the shit out of him already?" Cody was perched on the sloped roof of their storehouse above them, hand propping up his chin and a _blaster rifle_ slung across his lap in a false affectation of boredom.

Alpha's scar-cleaved lips twitch into a smirk, "Eh. Kid's already beat to shit. More time on garden tending duty won't hurt him."

CT-7567 groans to his feet. "Does this mean I get to sleep in?" 

Cody's disapproving tsk warns him of his folly before Alpha's smile broadens into something mocking and full of teeth. 

"For that, I'll be shaking your ass out of bed at the crack of dawn for drills tomorrow."

He sighs heavily and nods, going back into the battle ready pose Alpha had hammered into him. His feet ache in their cool, squishy bandages. 

Alpha's eyes glint with approval. 

"Good. See that, Glory? Right back on his feet without any bitching. I think that's the first time I've ever had the pleasure," Alpha purrs, circling him. For the first time, CT-7567's flash training offers a similarity rather than a direct definition; Alpha moves like a thylacoleo. 

"Incredible, big brother," agrees Cody as if by rote. 

"Pretty sure whining would get me cuffed," CT-7567 notes, concentrating on his feet as he turns to keep Alpha in his sights. It was so, so easy to get tangled up in his own limbs. 

Both Cody and Alpha laugh at that. 

"Smart, too. You better keep up, Glory, or Babyface here will end up my new favorite."

"I'm not _Baby-"_

Alpha lashes out so quickly that CT-7567 doesn't even realize he's been hit until he's on the ground struggling to draw air. 

"Then pick a name or I'll find one for you."

CT-7567 lets out a wheeze and struggles to lay on his side. He yelps with what little breath he has when Alpha suddenly tackles him, bearing him down on the dirt, hands grasping and painful. CT-7567 struggles against him full body when a punch lays into his side hard enough to make his ribs creak. He's scrabbling, punching, kicking, and clawing. He has a momentary, panicked moment of amazed horror because he has no idea how the man has enough breath to _talk_ while grappling him. 

Alpha snarls, "On the Ark you fight for your life. Because everything will kill you given the chance. Do you think a raptor will wait for you to catch your breath? Do you think triceratops will step politely around you when you're on your back? No, they'll crush you and eat your mealy corpse. _Get up._ _Get up or I'll kill you!"_

CT-7567 twists and manages to throw an elbow frantically in the direction of Alpha-17’s face. The impact is horrible. It's the second time CT-7567 has ever used real strength against a living creature and he gasps at the shock of it, at the feel of blood-rich flesh giving and the crunch of damage caused by him. He feels Alpha's pain keenly as if it had been done to his own body. 

CT-7567 hesitates. And Alpha wrenches CT-7567 up by his shirt, lifts him, and _throws_ him. He rolls with the impact and tries to scramble away but Alpha pounces onto his back and rattles CT-7567's head when he slams it into that punishing, rough dirt with a thud. 

The only thing that keeps CT-7567 from truly panicking is that while the impact to his head had _really fucking hurt,_ especially in the shell of his ear, he could tell on some level that the damage had been superficial. His brain was well rattled but Alpha had not given him the concussion or death he was fully capable of bestowing upon his skull. 

Even still, he scrambles onto hands and knees, preparing to bolt. But, blessedly, the assault stops. 

CT-7567 relaxes onto a hip and slumps there, panting. Alpha isn't even breathing hard but he's got a bloody nose dripping onto his shirt which he prods at with a wet sniffle. 

"... I'm-" 

"Don't apologize," Alpha interrupts, "I'm not mad that you landed a good hit." 

CT-7567 tips his head back, gulping for air, gritting his teeth. Manages to hiss, "Then why the fuck did you do that!?" 

"S'for your own good." 

_"Bloodless bastard-!"_

Alpha slaps the back of his head and grabs the back of his neck. CT-7567 struggles and swings at him, trying to break free, but Alpha endures each blow with stoic, unrelenting strength until CT-7567 is forced to give in.

He sobs and snarls into the dirt as Alpha pets a hand along his scalp, brushing dirt and leaf-shards from the short bristles of his hair. 

"Hate me all you like so long as you survive," Alpha murmurs. 

  
  


*******

"He's only rough with you because he loves you," Cody tells CT-7567 later, after he's tipped Alpha's head back to look at his nose and realigned it, apparently, for the sixth time. He's got a little bit of Alpha's blood in the seams of his palms as he redresses CT-7567's feet and wrist. 

"He's seen too many brothers die. He can't afford to be gentle with you." 

  
  


*******

  
  


The rest of CT-7567's day is spent in the gardens with Cody. First order of business is watering the garden with buckets pulled from the nearest stream. The gardens were, because of the slope from floodwater, on flatter ground in camp and water needed to be carried up to it from the hill along a well-worn footpath. They each had two buckets balanced on either end of supple branches carved into poles by hands long gone. The poles were braced on their shoulders. CT-7567 pants from the exertion even if his buckets were only half full. Cody's, of course, were brim with heavy liquid and he barely slops any of it. 

"Eyes up," Cody snaps, "Always have your eyes up. And actually _use_ them to see what's around you. You are another watchman and you can keep all three of us safe from predators." 

CT-7567 is already sick of the enforced hypervigilance… But if not for Alpha, he might have died that morning at three days old. So he lifts his head, blinks the sweat out of his eyes, and _looks_ as they plod back to camp. 

They pass the den on their way to the garden. Alpha is seated at the entrance, busily weaving a sturdier door for them. He's got that rough hewn axe at his side and his eyes are keen on the path behind them. 

CT-7567 echanges a nod with him, which Alpha returns. 

Cody kicks a bit of dry, dusty dirt in Alpha-17’s direction. Alpha grabs his ankle and yanks. Cody doesn't go down easily, kicks and fights it, makes Alpha really work for it, but he does inevitably go down, and CT-7567 has to dance away or get doused by the water spilt from his buckets when he topples over. Incredibly, not once does Alpha's vigilant, scanning gaze get distracted from the treeline. 

"Oops," says Alpha mildly, "you should watch your step, Glory. Better go get some more water." 

Cody is already back on his feet, shirt drenched. He flicks droplets at Alpha with a fake sneezing noise and an utterly insincere apology. Alpha whips him across the back of his thighs with a willow branch without missing a beat. CT-7567 can't help his grin. 

CT-7567 watches over Cody when he descends the hill to refill his buckets. It's a little annoying how athletic the guy is, how quickly he's able to power up and down the hill compared to CT-7567's slow crawl. 

But Cody prances back up the hill with two new buckets slung across his shoulders and a peppy bounce in his step. 

Alpha is smiling faintly at them as they pass a second time. 

CT-7567 stares at Cody.

"I think I love you," He says honestly. 

Cody blinks then smiles, broad and boyish. 

*******

They douse the gardens with several trips worth of water, positively soaking the soil as much as they can. Their section of the jungle is hot and surprisingly dry, after all, and loose soil sure as hell makes it easier to pull weeds. 

Lady Duckberry's pen, shared by another deep red and brown parasaur named Sir, sits right next to the garden. The location was chosen half because it certainly made gathering fertilizer so much simpler and half because they could tip out the water trough with its stale, dirty water straight into the garden. 

Garden watered, CT-7567 pulls on a pair of thick leather gloves and sets to pulling the weeds and gathering their food. Meanwhile Cody goes about the inglorious business of cleaning the parasaur pen. 

It doesn't take CT-7567 long to evict unwanted plants from their too-large garden, not with how vigilantly they monitor it already. It takes longer to gather ripe fruit, vegetables, and leaves, all in bigger quantities than they can reasonably eat. Cody and Alpha told him yesterday that they would need to start preserving and storing most of their yield. As CT-7567 fills the woven baskets with food, he takes care to brush dirt and detritus off of the little stones painted to mimic fallen fruit. A brother named Digger had apparently set them out to confuse and deter birds. 

The dodo pen on the opposite side of the garden is as noisy as ever. The feathered beasts crowd up against the latticed metal fence and honk demandingly at CT-7567 for the bounty in his largest, most weather worn basket. Their heads swivel to raptly trace the path of each rotted or damaged fruit tossed in. 

"Shut up! Stars, you guys are such fucking brats. Muzzle was far too nice to you." Cody growls from the parasaur pen.

They trill greedily when a stepped-on squash sails through the air and squawk, flaring their useless stubby wings, when the basket almost tips over.

"Hmmm…" Alpha muses from the boulder that he'd moved his weaving project to, "That was a good throw, little brother. You're getting better."

"Thanks. They're good encouragement," CT-7567 says, lifting his hat to wipe his brow on his muddy sleeve. 

"Ugh," Grunts Cody from where he's shoveling dung. 

"We'll have to cull a few of them if only to keep the racket down," Alpha muses, barely watching his hands as he works leaves and grass into the heavy frame across his lap. 

Cody sighs and straightens, shovel planted into the gunk, leaning to stretch at his hip flexor with a grimace. 

"No… We're already drowning in food. It'd be a waste if we butchered so many right now."

Alpha shrugs, "We'll store some, have an indulgent dinner, and feed the rest to those murderbeasts of yours, then."

Cody blinks and tips his head, "Not a bad idea, but…" 

"But?" Alpha prompts in a mild tone CT-7567 is beginning to recognize is something of a trap. 

Cody jabs his shovel into the filth for a moment of aggressive shoveling. 

"Muzzle loved them, is all." 

Alpha's eyes tighten just a fraction but his hands don't slow. "Muzzle's dead," Alpha replies bluntly, "We're alive. They are too stupid to be trained to shut up and we don't have the bandwidth to waste time trying. We're lucky the whole damned Ark isn't knocking on our door to see what the ruckus is already."

Cody shovels silently for a long moment and CT-7567 quietly thumbs mejo berries into his palm one by one. 

Alpha sighs again. "I miss Muzzle too, Glory. But he'd kick your ass if you endangered your life on his account."

"... Yeah. I know."

"Your murderbeasts need to eat, Glory, if you insist on keeping them. And, for the record, I don't think you should. The liopleurodons would appreciate a heftier donation."

"I know, Alpha."

CT-7567 looks up from his work to check on Cody, worriedly watching the man as he wipes at his neck and shoulders with a rag. 

The dodos honk and chirr for attention, annoyed that they had been ignored so long. 

Alpha clucks his tongue, shaking his head, "I hear a throat begging to be cut." 

That startles a laugh out of both CT-7567 and Cody. 

Cody relents, "Alright, alright. So long as we keep Stinky."

CT-7567 sputters a snort into a narcoberry bush. 

"Sure, whatever. We'll keep three of them, you two can pick which ones. All females. Eggs are nice, after all. If any of them die and we need to repopulate we'll just kidnap Lenny like CT-7567 wanted."

"After all the hard work I put into catching him last time? Fuck you," CT-7567 laughs, throwing a spoilt berry in Alpha's direction. Alpha watches it sail past harmlessly while the dodos lose their minds. 

"Shameful miss, little brother. Do it again. And this time you better hit me."

He does. Alpha pops the berry in his mouth. 

*******

With his job done and his limbs trembling from exhaustion, CT-7567 takes up Alpha's efforts to upgrade the door after a brief lesson on how to accomplish it. He keeps watch while Alpha and Cody finish cleaning the pens, including the dodo pen. That done, they wash out the water troughs and fill both food troughs with hay and rejected foodstuffs from the garden. Sir and Lady Duckberry hurriedly crowd around the fresh food, though Duckberry pauses to lip at Alpha's fingers and butt into his palm. Cody pats the dust from their broad sides. Sir lows happily at the pat, and Cody pauses to knock more dust from him before climbing out. Sir’s lip curls with pleasure. The dodos fall mostly silent as they ravage their food.

Then, after a brief meal of choice picks from the garden and balled up pemmican, all three of them travel to and from the stream to fill the freshly scrubbed water troughs with clean water. Alpha carries four buckets each time and this time Cody carries three. CT-7567 is forbidden from carrying more than two half filled buckets. Honestly, he isn't sure that he could if he tried. 

On their final trip back down the hill they drop off their supplies. Then Alpha starts shucking off his clothes, throwing a questioning glance at Cody. 

Cody waves him off, "I'll snack a little more and join in a second. You go ahead."

Alpha nods, tugging his shirt over his head and tossing it onto the poles they'd just finished hanging up. CT-7567 looks away from the old claw marks gouged deep into the man's hard-muscled flank. 

"I'll check the gill nets upstream, then. CT-7567, you start checking the ones here. Then the two of you can check the nets downstream together." 

Pants, socks, and boots follow suit. Nude, sweaty, and filthy, Alpha slips into the deeper than expected water and plunges in briefly to wet his hair. Then he heads as promised upstream with slow steps along the streambed. He takes a pike with him. 

"You sure you dont want in yet?" CT-7567 asks his companion, "I'm not the one who spent all day shoveling shit. I don't mind waiting if you want me to stay on watch."

Cody was still chewing on a mouthful of pemmican. He shook his head mutely and CT-7567 starts reluctantly disrobing. 

"Nope, it's alright, we can keep our eyes peeled while bathing together," Cody replies easily once he's swallowed his mouthful. Then he smiles, a slow curve to his mouth that CT-7567 hadn't seen before, "I certainly don't mind watching you." 

CT-7567's brain misses a step.

"Oh."

Cody dusts off his hands and settles back with that same lazy smile. 

"Go on." 

"I'm not much to look at," CT-7567 remarks, trying not to be… So keenly aware of Cody's gaze as he strips. 

Cody hums when CT-7567's pants drop to the ground. "I disagree."

CT-7567 steps out of the soft, worn leather, bending to pick the pants up and sling them onto the rack beside Alpha's. His boots came off but he left the bandages on his feet, unwilling to step on the coarse stones without them. 

"Hard to believe when I'm standing next to Alpha. Or you, for that matter." 

"Oh, you'll fill out in due time, little CT-7567. You'll be magnificent. But for now you're pretty and soft."

CT-7567 barks an embarrassed laugh as he steps into the chill water. Behind him, Cody began peeling out of his messy clothes. CT-7567 watches the hard muscle of his abdominals stretch and flex as he removes his shirt.

Cody sloshes into the stream, coming right up beside him. A strong hand grips at his asscheek and teeth nip at CT-7567's ear where it wasn't scraped and raw. CT-7567 gasps sharply at the ferocious blaze of sensation that tugs at his guts and heats his skin. 

Cody leans back to meet CT-7567's hazy gaze with smiling eyes, "You're about over your decanting sickness. Now you're at the perfect stage where you're still thin skinned and sensitive. It'll never feel so intense again in your life. So… how about it?"

  
  


*******

  
  


CT-7567's legs were spread wide for Cody’s hips to slot between them, groaning long and gutteral as he rocks up against the bulge in Cody's pants. 

Cody licks at the spend on his fingers, a savage smile on his face. "Mmm.. And now you know the meaning of life."

CT-7567 whines and shakes when the pad of Cody’s thumb traces circles around the wet head of his cock, writhing naked on the furs, clawing mindlessly at Cody’s bare golden brown shoulders. 

"That's… Three orgasms now? Lets see if I can get you to cum dry." 

"Oh no," CT-7567 pants, cock twitching erratically in Cody's grip, "Have mercy, pl-!" 

Cody gently presses a fingernail into the slit of his cock, just hard enough to threaten at the concept of pain, and CT-7567 whines as his balls clench and bliss rocks through his body again, whiting him out. 

When he comes to, the other man has a hand over CT-7567's mouth. He desperately huffs into it, struggling some against his iron grip. 

"Shhh… Remember, our burrow isn't soundproof. Shhh, little 67. Settle."

CT-7567 nods unsteadily then closes his eyes and licks at the fingers clamped over his face. Cody lay his weight into him with a weak, pained noise, tipping his fingers to thrust in and out of CT-7567's sucking mouth. Cody’s breath flutters against the same ear he'd bitten earlier and the wetness of it stings the abrasions Alpha had given him. His cock leaps against Cody’s hand as he fumbles at the catch of his pants. 

"I think Colt got me to orgasm… ten times? I think? While I was still shiny and new. Not sure, I blacked out when he took me."

CT-7567 opens his mouth to beg for mercy that he didn't really want, but Cody’s fingers stroke along his tongue, rendering his speech into an incoherent whimper. 

"Wait till I start playing with your hole. You're going to lose your fucking mind," Cody growls into his mouth. 

CT-7567 had been uncertain about the wet, slick sensation of kissing when Cody first taught him. Now, bombed on endorphins, he parts his lips pleadingly and groans when their tongues fucked together. He breathes in a shocked gasp when Cody’s saliva-wet fingers probe past his balls and press-

But he trusted Cody, trusted that he certainly knew better than he about how to make a body sing, and reluctantly tolerates the invasive touch. 

There was a clay pot of lubricant made, apparently, by Cody back when his lovers were still alive. CT-7567 learns that he was absolutely right to trust Cody’s superior experience when he has three of Cody’s fingers drilling straight into his prostate. He arches up into each thrust of his fingers, a primal satisfaction purring in his hindbrain deeper than flash training could ever go at the slick sounds of the heel of Cody’s hand hitting his perineum. 

He comes thrice just from Cody’s gorgeous fingers.

It was also, apparently, courtesy to clean up messes as you go when coupling in the den. Which explained why Cody licks up every drop of spend and the rough blanket he lays out under CT-7567's hips before Cody eases his cock inside him. 

Sure enough, CT-7567 passes out around what felt like the tenth orgasm. 

  
  


*******

CT-7567 wakes while it's still dark to Alpha’s unkind smile hovering over him. 

“Morning chores. Let's go."

CT-7567 groans, squirming under the pelts they pull over their limbs in the night. When the cold leaches into their burrow they sleep curled together with Alpha’s broad body forming a wall of muscle between them and the door. Without any prompting CT-7567 had been relegated to the middle between the two and slowly boiled from their heat through the night. The furs were still warm from Alpha’s body. 

“Come on. Up, you little shits.” 

“Yes, Alpha,” CT-7567 parrots on a gusty sigh. Cody yawns and stretches full-body behind him.

Cody also rolls to smack a wet kiss to CT-7567 before sighing and heaving himself upright. CT-7567 glances at Alpha, who only blinks slow and bland in response to the quick display of affection. 

They pull on their leather day clothes, rewrap CT-7567’s feet, and snack on some berries before crawling out into the crisp, chilly morning air as one. 

Doing chores with the ache in his hips, his ass, his injuries, and the nearly crippling muscle soreness was a trial. But Alpha is always relentless and forces him to keep going. True to his word, working through the pained clench of his body forces it to loosen under renewed blood flow. By the time the sun rose CT-7567 wasn’t stooped like an old man anymore. 

They break for lunch in one of their storehouses to clean their wide assortment of weapons while they eat.

This one is the wooden structure, a log cabin wreathed in rough, weather beaten nets that allegedly once held thatch to keep out the cold. Inside it is dominated by dusty, cobwebby shelves laden with various preserved, jarred, and dried foodstuff, barrels boxes and chests of various supplies, and a loft where less-used materials were stockpiled. 

Sitting at the soft-wooded table he carefully uses a rag laden with rendered dino-tallow to polish a knife. And CT-7567 learns the history of his brothers on the Ark. 

“This house was probably made by boys that came long before the Nulls,” Alpha murmurs. He’s running a whetstone along the length of a spear tip, long slow rasps followed by a shrewd assessing glance along the length before rasping along the blade again. “As for the Nulls…. They were about… two batches of boys before you, little brother. As far as we can tell, they probably weren’t the first to live on the Ark… but they were the ones to live long enough to leave a footprint. Records and buildings that guide and shelter the batches that came after them.” 

CT-7567 glances at the inside of the cabin. Around the shelves, many of the walls were covered in hash marks, days recorded faithfully until years passed and those making them died or realized the futility of their efforts. Alpha nods, pointing with an oil-blackened finger to the completely bare wall beside the door. On that wall, there are not hash marks, but _numbers,_ starting with the oldest:

N-5 AKA Prudii

N-6 AKA Kom'rk

N-7 AKA Mereel

N-10 AKA Jaing

N-11 AKA Ordo

N-12 AKA A'den

“... Why were so many numbers skipped?” CT-7567 asks, voice soft. 

Alpha shrugs, tipping his spearhead this way and that. “The others probably didn’t live long enough to record their designations on the wall. Mine is A-17 AKA Alpha. Glory’s is CC-2224 AKA Glory AKA Cody because he had to be special like that and screw up the formatting.”

There were… not nearly as many numbers on that wall as he expected. But at the same time, there were also far too many numbers when only three of them sat at the table. Alpha’s entry was not far below the collection of nulls. Not much time had passed since many of the oldest numbers had been carved in. 

A-02 Spar

A-17 Alpha 

A-26 Maze 

A-30 Sull 

A-58 Trantos

.... A-66 _Muzzle...._

A-77 Fordo 

A-98 Nate

More numbers and personal names going on… 

Blitz

Carg

Aven

Cards

Oh, stars, _Digger._

And right after him, Colt… 

and on… 

Cody, Neyo, Bacara, Gree, Appo, Salvo, Faie, OddBall, Keller, Shout-

And on. 

Cody nods toward the wall with his chin, his face soft with grief. “You should add your designation to the wall.”

CT-7567 looks down at the knife in his hand. “... I don’t have a name yet, though.”

“You can always add it to the wall when you figure it out,” Alpha points out reasonably. 

CT-7567 sighs and nods, pivoting on his ass to dismount the log bench he’d been sitting on. He crosses the room to that wall, thumbing the knife a moment, soaking in the numbers and names. He wonders how long he'll last on the Ark, whatever the Ark was. It had claimed more lives than they could account for. 

Alpha had been careful to drill into him proper handling of a knife but his grip is uncertain as he uses it to chip at the wood on the wall, slowly carving out his mark.

CT-7567

  
  


*******

That evening they pick out the Dodos to cull. 

Cody has to repeatedly push away the greyish pink one that keeps rushing to bum-rush his hand, murmuring with a dark, subdued chuckle, “No, Stinky. No. Trust me, sweetheart, you don’t wanna come with.”

CT-7567 grabs her, Bummy, and Pinky by their long flexible necks so Alpha and Cody can plop the rest into a sizable, loosely woven cage. Honestly, Alpha was right. They didn’t need this many Dodos. And they were so deafeningly loud. 

He can tell Cody is sad, though, and he himself isn’t looking forward to it when he closes the Dodo pen and follows after the other two to the butchery. It is an open air structure a smidge further out from the rest of their camp, huddled against a defensible rocky cliff wall. 

He doesn’t expect Alpha to hand him the knife hilt-first. Alpha’s gaze is hard. Behind him Cody looks sympathetic but its clear in his face that there would be no protest from him. 

Alpha waits impatiently. CT-7567 takes the knife. 

  
  


*******

He can’t tell whether or not Alpha is mad at him, and in a strange way that hurts more. 

CT-7567 did it, though. He killed them like Alpha asked. Alpha hadn’t asked him to do anything cruel-- it needed to be done. He knew that. And they had taken care to ensure dodos hadn’t seen it coming-- they had been asleep, a reflex when tipped upside down with blood pooled dizzily in their heads. He swore he sensed that split second of _panicpain_ , though, when he’d done it. Then their presences went hauntingly silent. 

But CT-7567 did what he asked without complaint. He cried while doing it. Was crying ugly, hitching, snotty sobs _now._ But he’d done it. 

Cody stands behind him with his hands on CT-7567’s shoulders, quietly keeping watch to allow CT-7567 the moment to grieve for the necessities of life and whatever remained of his innocence. 

  
  


*******

“It’s better your first kill be here in a controlled environment, little brother,” Alpha’s deep voice says, “So you can freak out in peace and safety. Better here, where their deaths were as merciful and quick as we can manage, than when you’re fighting for your life. On the Ark? There’s no survival without the will to defend our own lives to the death. That includes killing to eat-- we can’t live on what our garden produces alone.”

CT-7567 shivers when Alpha kisses the center of his brow gently. The larger man chafes CT-7567’s sore bicep. 

“Come, little brother. I’ll teach you how to clean and prepare the carcass. Hard part is over. Soon you’ll be ready to come on hunts.” 

  
  


*******   
  


The three of them go to present the spare dodo carcasses to Cody’s ‘murder beasts.’

Shiner and Fizz lived in the forest, unpenned and unchecked, on the other side of the stream network. 

Felled palm trees serve as bridges between the many islands, odd and slightly uncomfortable to traverse due to their curved surfaces but ultimately sturdy and timeless as well as easy to construct as far as bridges went.

At the last island on the far side, Cody whistles. After nearly twenty minutes of whistling, they come. 

Shiner and Fizz were a mated pair of raptors. Alpha wouldn't let them visit the raptors without being fully kitted out with their precious blasters in hand. He'd been on edge and radiating tightly restrained anger the entire time. His disappointment when they turn up is noticeable. 

The raptors have an even easier time traversing the tree bridges than they did, though the trees bounce from their weight as they thunder across. 

CT-7567 struggles to not blast the creatures when they slid to a stop close by. The yellow and green one beeped an oddly melodious note at them and cocked its head. Cody immediately tossed a carcass to them. 

He felt sick watching them tear the carcass apart. But he couldn't look away from those shredding teeth or what short work they made of the bird. 

"Shout found their eggs. Separate nests--Fizz is the yellow one, the female. Shiner's the red one. He's a younger than her by about a week. Shout incubated them and raised them by hand. The only reason Alpha hasn't snuck out and killed them-" 

"Still might," Alpha growls. 

"-is how many times they saved Shout's life. They refused to eat him even when he was broken and bleeding in front of them on several occasions."

Cody quirks half a smile, using the weight of the dead dodo to fling it high in the air. CT-7567 flinches when Shiner pounces seven feet in the air to catch it with a cry. 

"Stars," CT-7567 breathes. 

"They keep this side of camp safer, though. Makes our lives a little easier."

"Shout was a freak of nature," Alpha rumbles, "I don't know how he did it, but all I know is that we aren't him and I don't trust they'll spare us like they spared him. Stay away from them, little 67."

"They were… Very upset when Shout died. But they've never attacked us." 

"Keep them fucking fed, and hopefully they never will." 

*******

They have gill nets in the river on the other side of the decanting beach, too. 

CT-7567 kneels with his brothers several days later in the shallow, crystalline waters of the rocky beach. His feet have long since healed over and they’ve also adjusted to the brutal cold of the water. Now he doesn’t mind the chill, and he holds the gasping fish and gazes into its eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” He whispers, holding it down as it thrashes, carefully positioning the knife over it’s throat, “I’m sorry. Thank you.”

Cody and Alpha politely ignore CT-7567’s quiet exchanges with fish, busily killing and hurriedly cleaning theirs out before hooking a line through their gills and hanging them up for easy transport. It’s already become second nature to him to always glance at his surroundings every few seconds, ever watchful for danger.

“So, I’ve been wondering…” CT-7567 begins, “... why do you two look so similar?”

Cody and Alpha both lift their heads to stare at him. 

“... What?”

Alpha sighs and rolls his eyes to exchange a long-suffering look with Cody. Or, at least tries to-- Cody has his lips curled into his mouth and is biting down on them to hold back a grin or a laugh. 

CT-7567 yelps when Alpha hauls him up by the back of his shirt and leans him over the water.

“Look at your reflection,” his eldest brother orders. 

It takes him a moment to shift the focus of his eyes from the small, rounded, densely packed pebbled beach to look instead at the reflection wobbling on the smooth, quick moving water. It’s a face he’s seen many, many times before. Closer to Cody’s than Alphas, given their respective ages, and there isn’t that shiny red, deep carved, handsome scar Cody’s newly lifted bandages revealed. 

“Oh,” CT-7567 blurts, “All of us?”

Alpha releases the back of his shirt with a sigh. “Yep. Every single one of us.”

Cody giggles, shaking his head and returning to his work. 

Another revelation follows closely on the heels of the last. 

“Wow. I really am blonde, huh? That’s unusual, right?”

Alpha nods, rinsing his hands briefly in the current. “Exceedingly. I’ve never met a brother with hair any color but black.”

“... Huh. Do we know why we are all the same?”

“Nope,” Alpha replies simply, “no other creatures are identical like us.”

Cody shrugs a shoulder, flicking viscera out into the currents. “Probably just the same nonsensical dungshit that put this whole operation together. Whatever that is.”

All three of them grunt in unhappy unison. 

“Fuck the Ark.”

“Yep. Fuck it.”

*******   
  
  


“So where did the damn blasters and slugthrowers come from?” CT-7567 asks the next time they’re in the storehouse cleaning their weapons. Alpha is forcing him to disassemble and reassemble a DC-17 blaster pistol while he watches shrewdly. 

Cody answers immediately without looking up from the sewing repairs he’s performing. “Supply crates. They come down from the sky.”

“.....” CT-7567 scowls, snapping the charge home. 

“He’s telling the truth,” Alpha cuts in, “But that was slow. Do it again, faster this time.” 

“Yes, Alpha.”

“Supply drops are rare,” Alpha rumbles, “And not all of them are good. On top of that, retrieving them can be more trouble than they’re worth. The equipment we do have needs parts we don’t often have. So we must use them sparingly. But if you need to use them, I damn well expect you to use them with skill. Again.” 

  
  


*******

Lady Duckberry lays a pair of eggs one night, and they catch her making a nest out in the field they loosely viewed as a ‘pasture.’ They weren’t sure whether or not either could hatch a new parasaur yet. So CT-7567 stood holding them while Cody restacks their various baskets for easier storage, mussed while looking for a good container for the eggs. Above them, Alpha was repairing something on the roof of their workshop/smithy. 

Out of nowhere, a thought occurs to him. “Wait. We’re all identical, right?” 

“Uh-huh,” replies Cody.

“Then we really have no women, do we? Or babies. Or. Eggs.” 

Cody bursts out laughing suddenly, tipping his head back with that beautiful boyish smile that CT-7567 likes so much. 

“Hey! Hey, Alpha! Little 67 just asked about where our babies come from!” Cody calls.

“I don’t care,” replies Alpha’s faraway voice. 

*******

After candling the egg, they decide one egg was fertilized while the other was not. The fertilized egg was given back to duckberry and she was separated from Sir, who tended to be careless with his footsteps.

They had omelettes.

*******

CT-7567 gets a positively ferocious sunburn. 

"Nice," Cody congratulates him, punctuated with a hearty slap to the meat of his fried shoulder. 

CT-7567's yowl is honestly motivated more by how startled he is than by the sting itself. Cody has been all but begging for a fist to the ear since they met, anyway, and he feels fiercely satisfied before his knuckles even connect. Cody doesn't even have the grace to look appropriately admonished-- he's grinning even though he's wincing and hissing through his teeth. 

  
  


*******

CT-7567 explores Cody’s mouth later when they’re sitting on a fence, greedily chasing each other’s mouths whenever they pause for breath. CT-7567 gets distracted sucking on Cody’s tongue and Cody bends him in half to fuck him silly.

Alpha beats the shit out of both of them, particularly Cody, for being so careless. 

  
  


*******

They hear it coming before they see it. 

CT-7567 has never heard anything like it before. Like a chorus of screams, as if an entire herd of beasts were being tortured to the rhythm of horrible, slow, thunderous footsteps. 

They have enough time to set loose all of the animals. CT-7567 doesn’t understand why or what is going on, not enough time, but he helps with the evacuation even still. 

In his opinion, dodos are quickly proving to not be worth the trouble. He has to stand trying to soothe Sir while the screams of the dying approach louder and louder. Alpha and Cody tie the dodos to the surprisingly calm Lady Duckberry’s saddle. All while whatever is causing those horrific shrieks is heading _right towards them_ judging by the birds fleeing the tree canopy so close by. CT-7567 would prefer to be far, far away from the path of whatever that thing was, but the dodos will attract whatever horror is coming with their racket. And they’re too stupid, they won’t flee on their own. 

Lady Duckberry, however, will. 

The parasaurs need no urging to bolt-- they hear the wailing too. Once the dodos are secured to the calmer parasaur, Cody wrenches the gate open and they bolt without encouragement. CT-7567 hopes Shiner and Fizz don’t eat them.

Alpha directs them to hide in the den while the trees shake. 

CT-7567 wants to pelt into the forest. But he remembers Shiner and Fizz, how deeply terrifying it was to match gazes with a true predator, remembers the dilophosaurus that could have so easily eaten him, and knows that venturing into the wilderness unprepared is far, far more dangerous than huddling like quiet little mice in their burrow. 

They crowd at the entrance to their den, fully armored and armed, peeking out into their camp struggling to breathe soundlessly. Waiting for the screaming horror to reach them. CT-7567 sweats through the leather of his gloves and shirt as the earth shakes, animals scream in horror, and trees groan as they topple. The shrieking of the thing itself makes his teeth ache.

He doesn’t understand why Alpha is letting them peek out of the entrance until the horror steps into view. 

It’s a T-Rex. But also not.

CT-7567 had never seen a T-Rex until this moment. His encyclopedic brain knows what it is, offers the title, but the horror only has the shape of a living Rex. 

The horror, for one, is made entirely of metal. There isn’t a single organic part of it aside from the gore and viscera hanging from the lipless maw wreathed in jagged fangs. It’s also falling apart. The worst of the damage was localized to the beast’s back, leaving its shoulders and spine a field of ruination. Every move it takes scrapes metal on metal. 

Pale green lights flicker inside of its skeletal chest, lightbulbs struggling to stay lit, and flickers of sparks from raw wiring snap flare and pop within it. Here and there, metal plates arranged to suggest the idea of flesh hung off the thing by their wires, swinging with each calamitous step. In other places, holes gape where segments had long fallen off. Once upon a time, the ribbed outer plates had been painted black and artificially pure green, but long term damage had scraped much of it off. 

The flat, pixelated lenses mimicking eyes flicker on and off. Neither can swivel, though CT-7567 can see it trying. 

_Tek T-Rex,_ his brain decides. 

Alpha’s jaw flexes as he watches the horror thud step by step through their camp, pieces of its own mockery of a body and ragged intestines swinging pendulously from it. 

Broken or not, the horror still possessed terrifying speed. 

It wasn’t able to see easily, but it could hear the terrified baying of a parasaur just fine. CT-7567 flinches when a metal foot crashes through their smithy as it lunges, easily crushing straight through.

The horror reared back with Sir in its mouth and _snicks_ their parasaur’s body in half cleanly. His top half fell to the dirt. 

Being entirely inorganic, the horror had no ability to eat its prey. But, programmed to behave like a proper T-Rex, it gobs on the carcass, snapping and pretending to swallow its body exactly five times before dropping the carcass carelessly. The parasaur’s bottom half fell onto the roof of their already-destroyed workshop. Half a ravaged parasaur was still considerably heavy and it crashes straight through the thatch. 

The horror stood in eerie silence for a time. Then it reanimates and slowly plods away, each footstep shaking them to their bones. 

Alpha didn’t let them leave the burrow until they couldn’t hear its footsteps or wretched shrieking anymore. CT-7567 suddenly understood why they stored quite a bit of food and water in the burrow, now. 

Amazingly, Lady Duckberry was already attending her little nest when they return, completely unconcerned with the squawking little bastards hanging from her sides. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CREDIT TO glubtheflyingfish ON TUMBLR FOR THE BEAUTIFUL IMAGES OF LADY DUCKBERRY, LENNY, AND CODY!!!

**Author's Note:**

> Assume all speech is in Mando'a unless otherwise specified! That is their native and only language. To that end I will not be putting in any Mando'a IN because that would make things confusing. I also love myself so I will not write every stinking piece of dialogue in Mando'a either. Though I'm sure some mandaboo would love the challenge. Anyone who wants to translate, feel free! 
> 
> *when Cody says his name was Glory but was changed to Cody he's REALLY saying that his name was the Mandalorian word for Glory (which is Kote) and Shout reasonably mispronounced it as Cody. To them, 'Cody' is a nonsense noise that only means 'that bitchy guy.' 
> 
> Hopefully that makes sense!


End file.
